A unified analysis of the future as epistemic modality

Abstract

We offer an analysis of the Greek and Italian future morphemes as epistemic modal operators. The main empirical motivation comes from the fact that future morphemes have systematic purely epistemic readings-not only in Greek and Italian, but also in Dutch, German, and English will. The existence of epistemic readings suggests that the future expressions quantify over epistemic, not metaphysical alternatives. We provide a unified analysis for epistemic and predictive readings as epistemic necessity, and the shift between the two is determined compositionally by the lower tense. Our account thus acknowledges a systematic interaction between modality and tense-but the future itself is a pure modal, not a mixed temporal/modal operator. We show that the modal base of the future is nonveridical, i.e. it includes p and ¬p worlds, parallel to epistemic modals such as must, and present arguments that future morphemes have much in common with epistemic modals and predicates of personal taste. We identify, finally, a subclass of epistemic futures which are ratificational, and argue that will is a member of this class.

Anankastic conditionals are just conditionals

“…Klecha (2014b) shows that those English predictive expressions are modals rather than simple temporal operators, based on a number of diagnostics, supporting previous claims made by Condoravdi (2002Condoravdi ( , 2003, Copley (2002), S. Kaufmann (2005) and others; see also Giannakidou & Mari (2016a, 2016b for arguments for Italian and Greek futures. One diagnostic employed by Klecha for English is modal sub-15 A reviewer asks whether aktionsart plays a bigger role, pointing out the apparent lack of a future-oriented reading of (i).…”

Epistemic modals, deduction, and factivity: new insights from the epistemic future

“…Comrie 1989: 53, cited in Salkie 2010); (ii) it is felicitous in our certainty and factive contexts, in contrast to [epistemic future] p. This suggests that, even on a unified analysis of epistemic future and future tense under a single epistemic modal meaning, we must still recognize two slightly different lexical variants, i.e., one that doesn't allow an empty ordering source and one that does. This connects to, though also challenges, (Giannakidou & Mari 2018).…”

“…Finally, Giannakidou & Mari (2018) focus on the similarities between epistemic must and the epistemic future in uncertainty contexts and analyze them as epistemic necessity modals. In order to derive the incompatibility of the epistemic future with certainty contexts, they argue that it presupposes that the modal base -f (w)has to contain both p and non-p worlds.…”

“…The fact that a future temporal and an epistemic modal interpretation are obtained through the same morphology is not an accident of English -it is indeed crosslinguistically very common (see, e.g., Winans 2016or Giannakidou & Mari 2018 for languages and references). Below we illustrate this with Romanian va, which, like English will, can convey both a future tense and an epistemic modal meaning.…”

Evidence and Bias: The Case of the Evidential Future in Italian

“…2 Setting the stage: the basic profile of the evidential future Future morphology in Italian can convey not only predictions about the future (as in (4)), but also hypotheses about the present or the past (see, e.g., Bertinetto 1979;Mari 2009;Giannakidou & Mari 2013, 2018: the speaker of (5) conjectures that Rosa is (/was) at the beach at the time of utterance (/yesterday). (/ieri).…”